She dropped her school books on the step and ran across the grass quite forgetting to explain who she was or why she had come. The branches of the tree were so low that the climb was no difficult one for a person as agile as Betsey. The wicked Dick fluttered about her head, rasping out his harsh protests, as she clambered higher and higher, but he had wedged his prize so firmly in a crotch that he could not get it out and was forced to see her carry it away. He was too well-trained a pet to attempt to peck her, but he sat on the wall and voiced his loud displeasure long after she had disappeared into the house. The old gentleman put on the spectacles and returned to his work very placidly, as though such robberies were too frequent for comment. Miss Miranda led Elizabeth away toward her own little sitting room above her father’s workshop. “Won’t you tell me about that house,” Betsey began promptly, afraid that she might miss obtaining the information that she desired, “that place there beyond the wall that looks as if a fire—” The glass cup that Miss Miranda still carried dropped clattering to the floor and shivered into a dozen pieces with a startling crash. “How very awkward of me,” she exclaimed apologetically as she stooped to gather up the fragments. Betsey, however, as she helped to collect the broken glass, had a vague realization that the awkwardness may have lain in her own blunt question and followed her new friend upstairs with no effort to follow her inquiries farther. “There is another shower coming up,” Miss Miranda said, “so we will light the fire here and be very cozy until it passes. I have just baked some gingerbread and some one really must try it while it is still fresh.” It was certainly delightful to sit in a cushioned chair by the wide fireplace where a few sticks were burning, to drink cool milk and eat new gingerbread and to hear the rain drumming on the tiles outside the casement window. Miss Miranda, sitting opposite with her knitting, was asking questions about Elizabeth’s father, about her work and her school and her plans for college, in which she seemed to be much interested. But she did not force the talk and left her guest leisure to lean back in her chair, sip her milk and watch, through the rain-spattered glass, a wet robin taking refuge from the rain below the dormer window ledge. “Yes,” Betsey assented, in answer to one of the last questions, “I like the school work well enough, but sometimes it seems very long and hard and I cannot help thinking about—other things. I begin to believe these last months of the term will never end.”